VLVL 24fps and "the Movement"

[Terrance]

Historical mythmaking is a risky enterprise for a
novelist, especially when the myth refuses to point 
a reassuring and accusatory finger at
political groups that the novelist's audience dislikes.
Even more risky is the way Pynchon's overtly feminist
novel covertly adopts mythical archetypes: the young
rebels are portrayed as archetypally feminine, the 
authority that they yearn for
as archetypally masculine.

But the historical myth of Vineland is cautiously
disguised by the tone of the book, a glowingly nostalgic 
tone that suggests that the spontaneities of the 1960s
were unambiguously admirable. The disguise is so effective
that the whole myth seems to have eluded many readers who 
would certainly have censured it if they had noticed it. 

The contrast between the achingly nostalgic tone of the
story and the harsh judgment of its content is Vineland's 
most calculatedly unsettling quality. The effect is designed 
to educate the reader away from the nostalgia that the book
itself evokes. Vineland adopts the nostalgic wish of its
early chapters precisely in order to expose the 
delusion and fantasy of those wishes later.

Well, we have reached those chapters now. Pynchon's satire of SDS is
scathing. 
A fictionalized parody of Colubia-Berkeley that cuts very deep into the
heart of 
the forever young, LSDers and visionaries who were and remain so hell
bent on calling attention to their good works and concerns. What did a
bunch of Columbia kids know about Harlem or Vietnam anyway? 




Dave Meury wrote:
> 
> joeallonby:  Sacrilege.
> 
> * * *
> 
> A little labor movement history, some warmed-over Aquariana ("Age of
> Aquarius" and all that), a dash of mythology, sprinkle with pop-cultural
> allusions, blend in broth of whimsy, and, voila -- Gospel!
> 
> Look, no one respects Pynchon's genius more than I, but even Homer
> nodded.  That's not Simpson, that's the blind Greek, no, not Oedipus,
> the other blind Greek, and, yes, I suppose Homer Simpson nods, too, and
> is blind in his own way, even likes to "Lear" a lot (hehe, "See better,"
> get it? whatever) but, well . . .